TiVo Rewards: Are YOU the one we’re looking for?

You’ve done it before. But now, with TiVo® boxes starting at an all-time low of just $49.99* after mail-in rebate, it’ll be even easier to refer friends and family to the amazing TiVo® service. And perfect timing, because…

You could win $1,000 every week! Between now and 12/31/05, every time you successfully refer someone to the TiVo® service, you’ll be automatically entered in a weekly, random drawing for a chance to win $1,000**. Yeow! (And yes, people really do win!)

How about $25,000 cash and the coolest car ever? We’re looking for the world’s first TiVo Ambassador™ so we can lavish him/her with over-the-top cash & prizes. To pre-qualify, you must have referred at least 5 people to the TiVo® service through the TiVo Rewards program by November 27, 2005 (that’s 25,000 TiVo Points) and YOU could be the lucky one to score $50,000 in cash and prizes, including a Mini Cooper convertible, plus the opportunity of a lifetime to be the first TiVo Ambassador! Learn more.

About MegaZone

MegaZone is the Editor of Gizmo Lovers and the chief contributor. He's been online since 1989 and active in several generations of 'social media' - mailing lists, USENet groups, web forums, and since 2003, blogging. MegaZone has a presence on several social platforms: Google+ / Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / LiveJournal / Web. You can also follow Gizmo Lovers on other sites: Blog / Google+ / Facebook / Twitter.

Trying to make up for the fact that since their sales vendor closed, I can’t use my TiVo Rewards on shwag?

wickerdotus

Things like this make me worry that Tivo is having more financial problems than we know about. A contest or something every so often is nice, but it seems that Tivo is tricking up their marketing all sorts of ways that have nothing to do with marketing the actual product.

They need to expand from this contest and rewards program bs, and get into market segments that are beyond word of mouth and the Internet.

megazone

TiVo is looking for a new reseller partner, so the store should be back before long.

megazone

They have – they’re running TV ads again, I’ve already seen the ads. And there is a new print ad campaign coming. They’ve also been doing more joint marketing like the deal with iRiver and Dockers/JC Penny. That was promoted in mailings by those companies, their own ads, in store, etc. So they’re not just relying on word of mouth.

However, that said, word of mouth is VERY powerful for any company, and exceptionally powerful for a company like TiVo. Especially going into the fall shopping season. I know I’ve sold at least a dozen boxes – got referral for 7 (and I just cashed that in for lifetime on a RS-TX20). Probably more than that I don’t know about with all the posting all over the net I’ve done over 3 years, and talking up TiVo to strangers when it comes up. So incentivising their userbase to evangelize the product is actually a fairly cost effective way to get more users.

Because it is kind of fun I’ve been using Google Blog Search to look for TiVo related posts on LJ. Sometimes, when I see someone debating getting one, I pop in and answer their questions – I’m sure I’ve sold a few in the past week that way.

TiVo also recently did deals with an association representing rural cable companies as well as Cablevision to promote TiVo DVRs to their users.

TiVo turned an operating profit last quarter, and was on track to do it this quarter. The old management’s plan was to plan for slow growth and manage for profitability going forward. But the new management decided that the window for rapid growth is closing, and they want to get as many users as they can before the Comcast rollout (which will canibalize some of TiVo’s SA sales, to be sure) and before the DirecTV contract ends. So they’re making a big push for this years, to try to sell a lot of units this holiday season. Making a marketshare grab – the more users they have, the better they are long term from the ongoing revenue. And they’ve shown that once someone is a TiVo user, they’re not likely to jump to something else except another TiVo. So it helps lock people in, and maybe they upgrade to an HDTV TiVo when they ship, etc.

TiVo could stop the marketing expenditures today and be profitable, but right now growth is more important than profit – and the more growth they can make now, the more profit they have long term. It also puts them into a better position when negotiating more cable deals, etc.

anonymous

Yeah I didn’t doubt they were looking, I just wanted to whine about it

starjewel

Yeah I didn’t doubt they were looking, I just wanted to whine about it

wickerdotus

Thanks for the detailed response. I’m glad to see Tivo is doing more than what I’ve seen as it relates to marketing.